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If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.

Alan Watts

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Alan Watts
Age: 58 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 6
Died: 1973
Died: November 16
Anglican Priest
Author
Dramaturge
Musician
Philosopher
Theologian
Videographer
Writer
Kent
England
Forget
Lives
May
Live
Unduly
Absorbed
Altogether
Improving

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Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.
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Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
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Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are.
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To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.
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The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?
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So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.
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When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.
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Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent...this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering.
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You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!
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... nets, grids, and other types of calculus.
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You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.
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Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.
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If you belong to an in-group of good, or saved, or elite people, you can only know that you’re in because someone else is out. You cannot live on the right side of the tracks without there being a wrong side of the tracks, so you ought to be grateful to the outside for having the privilege of being on the inside.
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How did you know you're alive, unless you'd once been dead?
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